Seventy prints of images showing people at work taken by A. Aubrey Bodine, Mr Mencken’s professional colleague, will be on display at the Baltimore Museum of Industry (BMI) from October 15, 2013 to February 6, 2014.
On November 7, 2013 from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm, Jennifer Bodine, Aubrey Bodine’s daughter, will present a lecture and book signing of her latest book Bodine’s Industry: The Dignity of Work. Admission is $12 for members of the BMI, $15 for non-members.
The BMI at 1415 Key Highway, Baltimore, is open Tuesday–Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. (Note that the museum is closed Monday). Parking is free.
We leave Mr Mencken to have the last words on work:
“The most steadily attractive of all human qualities is competence. One invariably admires a man who is good at his trade, whatever it must be — who understands its technic thoroughly, and surmounts its difficulties with ease, and gets substantial rewards for his labors, and is envied by his rivals.” (HLM, Minority Report)
“The only sort of man who is really worth hell room [is] the man who practices some useful trade in a competent manner, makes a decent living at it, pays his own way, and asks only to be let alone.” (HLM, Minority Report)